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User blog:Chocolatekoala96/Tips: Writing a Story Here!
Salutations! I'm Chokoala, a moderator for this wiki, and I wanted to share some tips that I use for story writing. Most of these tips can be used anywhere, but some are specific for writing a story on this wiki. I hope this helps you guys! 1 - Developing a basic plot Every good story should have a good plot, whether it's a short story or long. The story writing here is mostly pleasure writing, so it doesn't have to have some grand theme! However, it's always good to first plan out what's going to happen in the story. For this, I like to use something we use in school(even though it's typical) - Freytag's Plot Pyramid. It gives you a visual idea of a story's plot, but rather than pulling up an image of the pyramid, I'll just describe the plot instead: The story starts with the exposition, which should introduce the main characters, the setting, and other basic information. This helps avoid confusion in the story, which is one of the biggest things you do want to avoid. After the exposition comes the inciting incident, which is the one event that sets the story in action; this means that without this event, there would be no story. After the inciting incident, your story is truly set in motion! Then you have your rising action, which is the build-up of the conflict introduced in the Inciting Incident. Then comes the top of the pyramid: your climax. The climax isn't necessarily the most action packed moment in the story, but it's the turning point in the story where a character comes to some sort of realization or the conflict takes a turn. After this, you have falling action, which is when the action slowly gets less and less and the conflict doesn't build up anymore. Lastly, you have your resolution, which is where the conflict is either resolved temporarily or permanently and all loose ends are tied. When you're writing a story, you don't have to plan all of this before hand! In fact, sometimes it's better if you don't, because then you have more freedom to change things along the way. However, this plot structure is something good to keep in mind when you first start planning your story; for example, my Phantom Escape story. I don't have this whole plot pyramid perfectly planned for it, but I just had the general idea for what I was writing about - a raccoon in an Animal Jam setting that gets selected among other elite students for a spy mission with alphas. When you have that basic idea, make sure to consider this: "Can this story, at its full potential, reach a climax and resolution without having anything forced into the story?" More often than not, the answer will be yes! Anyways, just remember to have these elements in your story to have a strong backbone. 2 - Characters One of my personal favorite parts of creating a story is developing the characters. The characters don't necessarily have to be very deep, but sometimes, it's good to plan them out too! Before I get into tips about character development, I want to cover the times when you should have well thought character development. For my current story, Phantom Escape, character development is pretty important. Why? The story focuses on a main character, Stella. Although I haven't got to it yet, the main character is going to be going through difficult times in which she's unsure of herself. That's why it's good to show her personality, because the character's difficult times later on can be explained by her personality. So this would be an instance where you want to carefully plan your characters. Now for the latter; I'm planning to write a story based on a prompt I found online - "A group of villains plan to go on a team-building retreat." This is going to be for a short story, nothing too long (the equivalent of a page and a half, I'd think), and it's going to be the villains planning to go on this retreat. This won't require character depth because rather than focusing on the changes in characters, it's just going to be a short, comedic story outlining the villains' adventure in planning the vacation. I won't need to plan each villain's name, their likes and dislikes, their personality, et cetera. So, how should you plan your characters for a story? I would recommend filling out a table similar to the one below: As you fill out each field, it helps you make more connections about your character and helps you figure out how you want to develop your character throughout the story. It also helps you make sure your characters aren't perfect! 3 - Write Descriptively The writing is the most important part of the story! When you're writing, you want to make sure that you're not just telling the reader what's happening, but your'e describing it in detail. When you begin to write, create a visual in your head of what's happening in the story - you can even draw it, if it helps! Once you have the visual, exactly what it looks like, in your head, your goal should be to recreate that visual in words. Often times what I and a lot of other writers do is get that visual in your head and assume that others have the same visual. The scene you create in your head when writing is both your enemy and your friend, so use it as your friend and to your advantage as best as you can! 4 - Tips Specific to this wiki Using Subpages Subpages are a great way to organize your thoughts. For those of you who don't know what subpages are or how they work, I'll explain with an example. Let's say I'm making subpages for my story, Phantom Escape. The story page is going to be my main-page. My subpages are going to be each element of the story - for example, let's say I want a page dedicated to the planning of my characters. I can create a new page and title it "Phantom Escape/Characters." When you click into the subpage, it also conveniently adds a link for you to click back to the main-page! You can have as many subpages as you need(try not to create TOO many though, because we don't want the page count to be completely subpages!), and link to them in your main story page for your reference when you have a block. Using Templates I've created and coded a few templates that can be used based on their relevance to your story! 1. The work in progress template - this can be used for unfinished stories. To use the template, type in source mode at the top of your page! Here's what it looks like: 2. Story About Plaque - this is an optional plaque that can be used at the top of your page to give readers an idea of what the story is about! To use it, type this in source mode at the top of the page: If I was doing this for my Phantom Escape story, I could do this: Make sure that your plaque, if you choose to make one, pique's your reader's interest! I'll be creating navboxes son. Here's a full list of templates: 5 - Attitude Having the right attitude when you're writing is vital. Don't expect your story to be perfect or sound like a Newberry Medal author right away, and don't be afraid to ask for feedback in your writing! It's always a good idea to see what people think of your story. You shouldn't get angry or frustrated with constructive criticism you receive; don't think of yourself as a bad writer, but don't think of yourself as a perfect one either. If you get frustrated, don't try to keep forcing the story out. Take a break! Chances are, it's a classic case of writer's block and you just need to cool off for a couple minutes before returning to your story. Sometimes, it's better to just take a full day break from writing and come back refreshed. If you ever do find yourself in a writer's block, the best thing you can do is a take a break. You can look some story prompts up online, take a break from writing entirely, or whatever you need to do to clear your head of the story. Writer's block can last for a while, but don't sweat it. It happens to everyone sometimes. It's always good to ask others for help too! ---- That's all I've got, hope this helps y'all and thanks if you actually read this! ~Chokoala~ 18:06, August 17, 2019 (UTC) Category:Blog posts